This compilation explores the significance of religion for the controversies stirred up by populist politics in European and American contexts, engaging Jewish, Christian, and Islamic political thought. Moving beyond essentialist definitions of religion, the contributions offer critical interpretations and constructive interventions for political theology today.

Over the last decade, Robert Talisse has developed a devastating argument against reviving John Dewey’s democratic ideal. In his book, A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy, and in other essays, Talisse has argued that Deweyan democracy fails to accommodate Rawls’ conception of “the fact of reasonable pluralism” because it is committed to a perfectionist conception of the good. In response, this article offers a Rawlsian rebuttal to Talisse by drawing on Rawls’ own characterisation of perfectionism to show that Dewey’s conception of (...) the good is not perfectionist on Rawls’ account and thus can reasonably accommodate the fact of reasonable pluralism. is article thus begins by exposing and explaining Talisse’s argument, before articulating Shane Ralston’s rejection of the Berlinian and Rawlsian fillters presupposed by Talisse’s argument. Then, it develops its central argument by showing that, even if we accept the Rawlsian filter, Deweyan democracy does not fail to accommodate the fact of reasonable pluralism, because it only relies on a thin (not a full) theory of the good, before considering some foreseeable Talissean objections. Ultimately, the article concludes by showing that these objections fail because Deweyan democracy does not rely on a ‘full’ theory of the good. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This article considers the economic case for so-called sweatshop wages and working conditions. My goal is not to defend or reject the economic case for sweatshops. Instead, proceeding from a broadly pluralist understanding of value, I make and defend a number of claims concerning the ethical relevance of economic analysis for values that different agents utilize to evaluate sweatshops. My arguments give special attention to a series of recent articles by Benjamin Powell and Matt Zwolinski, which represent the latest and (...) best defense of the economic case for sweatshops. In the process, I challenge Zwolinski’s “non-worseness claim”, and the idea that opposition to sweatshop wages and working conditions fails to respect that the autonomy of would-be sweatshop workers. Ultimately, I conclude that even if the economic case for sweatshops rests on a solid empirical foundation, agents possess good reason to advocate for better wages and working conditions for sweatshop workers, and to prefer less exploitative or coercive relationships. Sweatshop labor undermines a compelling vision of free markets, according to both Kantian and republican conceptions of freedom, and the relationships formed by those who participate in such markets. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Deliberation Reasons for Deliberative Democracy Skepticism About Deliberation Some Tensions Between Participation and Deliberation And So? Final Reflections Notes.

How to Do Things with Fictions considers how fictional works, ranging from Chaucer to Beckett, subject readers to a series of exercises meant to fortify their mental capacities. While it is often assumed that fictions must be informative or morally improving in order to be of any real benefit to us, certain texts defy this assumption by functioning as training-grounds for the capacities: in engaging with them we stand not to become more knowledgeable or more virtuous but more skilled, whether (...) at rational thinking, at maintaining necessary illusions, at achieving tranquillity of mind, or even at religious faith. Instead of offering us propositional knowledge, these texts yield know-how; rather than attempting to instruct by means of their content, they hone capacities by means of their form; far from seducing with the promise of instantaneous transformation, they recognize, with Aristotle, that change is a matter of sustained and patient practice. (shrink)

This chapter discusses neurocognitive work relevant to moral psychology and the proposition that innate factors make important contributions to moral judgment. It reviews various sources of evidence for an innate moral faculty, before presenting brain-imaging data in support of the same conclusion. It is argued that our moral thought is the product of an interaction between some ‘gut-reaction’ moral emotions and our capacity for abstract reflection.

Key elements of John Searle’s articulation of the Standard Model of Social Ontology can be found within Max Weber’s ideal type of legal-rational authority. However, the fact that, for Weber, legal-rational authority is just one of three types of legitimate authority, along with traditional and charismatic authority, suggests limitations to the Standard Model’s scope of applicability. Where Searle takes himself to have provided an account of “the structure of human civilization,” Weber’s taxonomy suggests that Searle has only given us an (...) account of a way of being a civilization. This understanding of traditional authority also reveals why the Standard Model misconstrues the structure of ordinary, informal statuses, such as friendship. (shrink)

There are two principal philosophical conceptions of socialism, corresponding to two interpretations of the notion of a rational society. The first conception corresponds to an instrumental view of social rationality. Captured by the image of socialism as “one big workshop,” the instrumental view holds that social ownership of the means of production is rational because it promotes the optimal development of the productive forces. Social ownership is optimal because it eliminates the costs of coordination imposed by the conduct of economic (...) activities in formally independent enterprises, and, more generally, overcomes fetters on development that result from the control of resources by individuals whose particular interests imperfectly correspond to a general interest in productive advance. (shrink)

Milton Friedman and Amartya Sen have a lot in common. Both are Nobel Prize-winning economists who venture beyond the more technical questions of positive economics to demonstrate the relevance of their expertise to philosophy and public policy. Their social and political philosophy, including normative theorizing from their work and the work of other economists, comprises arguably the most influential part of their corpus. Like most Americans, both Friedman and Sen are liberals, in the sense that they argue that social arrangements (...) should be assessed according to their tendency to further the liberty of individuals. In addition, both demonstrate the deep link between political and economic institutions, and articulate the ways in which an individual’s freedom (or lack thereof) in one sphere impacts her freedom in other spheres. -/- Despite these and other similarities, there is an immense partisan divide between the followers of their work in American politics (in particular). Friedman’s work is championed by so-called neo-liberals – a group that has come to dominate the political and economic right in the United States - providing the philosophical foundation for demands for limited government and free markets. Both critics and plaudits regard Friedman as the “intellectual architect” of the free-market policies of the Republican Party, from Ronald Reagan forward. Sen’s work, on the other hand, is frequently utilized to defend so-called progressive policies in the U.S. and abroad. Such policies, many argue, further the effective or substantive freedom of individuals (an idea associated with early socialist thought). This essay begins an overdue systematic analysis of their social and political philosophy, focusing on the central driving concept for both theorists: the idea of freedom. With this study in hand, I recommend a pragmatic, pluralist understanding of freedom in the United States and elsewhere. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders the notion that Nagarjuna and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus may only be seen as comparable under a shared ineffability thesis, that is, the idea that reality is impossible to describe in sensible discourse. Historically, Nagarjuna and the early Wittgenstein have both been widely construed as offering either metaphysical theories or attempts to refute all such theories. Instead, by employing an interpretive framework based on a ‘resolute’ reading of the Tractatus, I suggest we see their philosophical affinity in terms of (...) a shared conception of philosophical method without proposing theses. In doing so, this offers us a new way to understand Nagarjuna’s characteristic claims both to have ‘no views’ and refusal to accept that things exist ‘inherently’ or with ‘essence’. Therefore, instead of either a view about the nature of a mind-independent ‘ultimate reality’ or a thesis concerning the rejection of such a domain, I propose that we understand Nagarjuna’s primary aim as ‘therapeutic’, that is, concerned with the dissolution of philosophical problems. However, this ‘therapy’ should neither be confined to the psychotherapeutic metaphor nor should it be taken to imply a private enlightenment only available to philosophers. Instead, for Nagarjuna and Wittgenstein, philosophical problems are cast as a source of disquiet for all of us; what their work offers is a soteriology, a means towards our salvation. (shrink)

Jiirgen Habermas is a radical democrat. The source of that self-designation is that his conception of democracy-what he calls "discursive democracy"-is founded on the ideal of "a self-organizing community of free and equal citizens," co- ordinating their collective affairs through their common reason. The author discusses three large challenges to this radical-democratic ideal of collective self-regulation: 1) What is the role of private autonomy in a radical-democratic view? 2) What role does reason play in collective self-regulation? 3) What relevance might (...) a radical- democratic outlook have for contemporary democracies? The author addresses these questions by considering Habermas' answers, and then presenting alternative responses to them. The alternatives are also radical-democratic in inspiration, but they draw on a richer set of normative-political ideas than Habermas wants to rely on, and are more ambitious in their hopes for democratic practice. (shrink)

This article argues that the Teaching Excellence Framework manifests the vice of epistemic insensibility. To this end, it explains that the TEF is a metrics‐driven evaluation mechanism which permits English higher education institutions to charge higher fees if the ‘quality’ of their teaching is deemed ‘excellent’. Through the TEF, the Government aims to improve the quality of teaching by using core metrics that reflect student satisfaction, retention and short‐term graduate employment. In response, some have criticised the TEF for failing to (...) meaningfully evaluate the quality of teaching. This article seeks to explain and justify this criticism. It thus presents Heather Battaly's account of the vice of epistemic insensibility and argues that the TEF manifests two key features of an epistemically insensible policy, namely: it promotes a failure to desire, consume and enjoy epistemic goods that it is appropriate to desire, consume and enjoy; and it does so because it is committed to a false conception of the epistemic good. Crucially, it argues that the TEF falsely assumes that epistemic goods that serve to bolster its core metrics are more valuable than epistemic goods that do not. The article thus shows how this relies on an erroneous conception of the purpose of education and thus a false conception of the epistemic good. Finally, the article considers two brief objections and concludes that the TEF advances a conception of the student‐as‐customer which detracts from desiring, consuming and enjoying epistemic goods related to edification, civic participation and the student‐teacher relationship. (shrink)

Van der Pijl et al outline data suggesting an alarmingly high incidence of violation of the bodily integrity of patients in labour, including episiotomies performed without patients’ consent, or over their explicit objection.1 Similar data have been reported from the USA and Canada.2 The authors appropriately conclude that explicit consent is required at the time of all invasive obstetrical procedures, including episiotomy. Commonsense adjustments to the duration and detail of consent under conditions of clinical urgency are appropriate and should be (...) familiar to any clinician involved in perinatal care, as well as non-obstetric proceduralists caring for acutely ill patients. However, complete omission of consent for any of these procedures is both disrespectful to patients’ autonomy and strongly associated with morbidity from birth-related psychosocial trauma.3–5 The true incidence of obstetrical procedures performed without patients’ consent is difficult to determine for multiple reasons, including sample selection, recall bias and patients’ reluctance to reengage with traumatic experiences; however, …. (shrink)

Financial relationships and business transactions between physicians and the health care industry are common. These relationships take a variety of forms, including payments to physicians in exchange for consulting services, reimbursement of physician travel expenses when attending medical device and pharmaceutical educational conferences, physician ownership in life science company stocks, and the provision of free drug samples. Such practices are not intrinsic to medical practice, but as the Institute of Medicine described in its 2009 report, these relationships have the potential (...) to produce positive collaborations that improve patient care and public health, and most physicians view it as “ethically proper to accept items ranging from drug samples to a lucrative consultantship.”However, financial relationships between physicians and pharmaceutical, medical device and biotechnology companies can also create negative influences on physician judgment that compromise patient care and jeopardize the public’s trust. (shrink)

Susan Okin has written an important book on justice and the family. Animated by the experiences that contemporary feminism has sought to articulate, and guided by a principled hostility to the subordination of women that continues to disgrace American life, she argues that the current ordering of domestic life in the United States is unjust and that its alteration ought to be made a matter of public policy.Families, according to Okin, are not havens in an otherwise heartless world. Instead the (...) current division of domestic labor marks them as the centerpiece of a broader system of inequalities between men and women. Justice condemns those inequalities and commands their remedy through the transformation of our domestic practices. Because the division of domestic labor is so fundamental to injustice, we need in particular to ‘encourage and facilitate’ equal sharing by parents in the responsibilities of child-rearing, and in the more quotidian chores that provide the material foundation of modern domesticity. (shrink)

This thesis proffers a novel argument from order for the existence of God called the eutaxiological argument. It maintains the universe’s order and existence is fundamentally grounded in logos (λογος) or Mind. Unlike teleological design arguments, the eutaxiological argument is not concerned with the alleged end or purpose of some physical entity—e.g., the human eye, the bacteria flagellum, or the universe taken as a whole. It is, instead, concerned with the fact that the universe is ordered. It, thus, makes a (...) distinction between ‘order’ and ‘telos’. It argues that exemplifying essential order is both a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of physical entities—and, indeed, for the existence of the universe—and that we need not think of physical order in terms of goals, purposes, or final causation. -/- Unlike most contemporary arguments for God’s existence, the eutaxiological argument argues for the existence of God as conceived of by apophatic theism. According to apophatic theism, the term ‘God’ denotes a unique, ontologically distinct, ineffable, logos that fundamentally grounds the universe’s order and existence from nothing. Historically, one can find proponents of apophatic theism in numerous philosophical and religious traditions—including some strands of Hinduism, Judaism, Neoplatonism, Christianity, and Islam. Its most ardent Christian exponents come from the Eastern Christian tradition. This dissertation offers a fresh defence of apophatic theism inspired by the Eastern Christian tradition. It responds to serious objections regarding the coherence of divine ineffability and the supposed logical incompatibility of apophatic theism with Christianity. (shrink)

Our recent paper reported that 43% of reviewer comment sets shared with authors contained at least one unprofessional comment or an incomplete, inaccurate of unsubstantiated critique. Publication of this work sparked an online conversation surrounding professionalism in peer review. We collected and analyzed these social media comments as they offered real-time responses to our work and provided insight into the views held by commenters and potential peer-reviewers that would be difficult to quantify using existing empirical tools. Overall, 75% of comments (...) were positive, of which 59% were supportive and 16% shared similar personal experiences. However, a subset of negative comments emerged, that provided potential insight into the reasons underlying unprofessional comments were made during the peer-review process. These comments were classified into three main themes: forced niceness will adversely impact the peer-review process and allow for publication of poor-quality science ; dismissing comments as not offensive to another person because they were not deemed personally offensive to the reader ; and authors brought unprofessional comments upon themselves as they submitted substandard work. Here, we argue against these themes as justifications for directing unprofessional comments towards authors during the peer review process. We argue that it is possible to be both critical and professional, and that no author deserves to be the recipient of demeaning ad hominem attacks regardless of supposed provocation. Suggesting otherwise only serves to propagate a toxic culture within peer review. While we previously postulated that establishing a peer-reviewer code of conduct could help improve the peer-review system, we now posit that priority should be given to repairing the negative cultural zeitgeist that exists in peer-review. (shrink)

To understand the consequences of cleansing, Lee and Schwarz favor a grounded procedures perspective over recently developed disgust theory. We believe that this position stems from three errors: (1) interpreting cleansing effects as broader than they are; (2) not detailing the proximate mechanisms underlying disgust; and (3) not detailing adaptive function versus system byproducts when developing the grounded procedures perspective.

I develop a new theory of times. I show how to analyze times as tenselessly describable “abstract” entities. Some philosophers make use of ersatz times, which are abstract entities such as maximal states of affairs that bear earlier than and later than relations to one another. Although these times are normally thought to exemplify A-properties that cannot be expressed in a purely tenseless language, I explain how a tenseless theory can accommodate abstract times. I do this by defending Rasmussen’s tenseless (...) presentism against a recent objection, and getting on the table a new theory of time that combines eternalism with a B-series of genuine, abstract times. The result is a new way to think about a familiar category: time. (shrink)

According to the Principle of Double Effect (PDE), there are conditions under which it would be morally justifiable to cause some harm as a foreseen side-effect of one's action even though it would not be justifiable to form and execute the intention of causing the same harm. If we take the kind of justification in question to be that of moral permissibility, this principle correctly maps common intuitions about when it would be permissible to act in certain ways. T.M. Scanlon (...) argues that the PDE so interpreted is problematic, as it returns implausible verdicts in other scenarios. Scanlon is unable to account for the common pattern of moral reasoning that we employ in the relevant cases. I argue that we can account for this pattern while avoiding implausible verdicts if we interpret the PDE as a principle about when it is licit to inflict harm rather than when it is permissible to do so, and if we connect the concept of the licit with that of the permissible in the right way. (shrink)

This article explains and defends the existence of value constancy, understood on the model of color constancy. Color constancy involves a phenomenal distinction between the transient color appearances of objects and the unchanging colors that those objects appear to have. The existence of value constancy allows advocates of response-dependent accounts of value to reject the question “What is the uniquely appropriate attitude to have toward this evaluative property?” as containing a false uniqueness assumption. Rejecting this assumption allows response-dependent accounts of (...) value to deflect or answer a host of popular objections. (shrink)

May interprets the prevalence of non-emotional moral intuitions as indicating support for rationalism. However, research in developmental psychology indicates that the mechanisms underlying these intuitions are not always rational in nature. Specifically, automatic intuitions can emerge passively, through processes such as evolutionary preparedness and enculturation. Although these intuitions are not always emotional, they are not clearly indicative of reason.

Objective chance, or the “big bad bug” of David Lewis's account of Humean Supervenience forces, as is well known, is a modification of the Principal Principle. Here, I argue that standard assumptions regarding conditional probabilities entail several puzzling consequences for Lewis's New Principle, namely, an apparent requirement to account for the chance of a theory of chance. These problems, I argue, cannot be adequately answered within the received framework, and so I suggest that an interpretation of conditional probabilities in terms (...) of Alan Hájek's recent work might go some distance toward their resolution. (shrink)

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are now seen as a moment when the ‘second’ British Empire arose from the ruins of the ‘first’ one. One witness to, and participant in, the convulsions of the age was Warren Hastings (1732–1818), the first governor-general of Bengal. Hastings’ career in India, his trial in parliament, and his imperial afterlife all have received fulsome attention. Yet his retirement years have been overlooked, owing to the misperception that they were uneventful. This article introduces (...) and presents a series of letters written by Hastings, late in life, to Governor-General Lord Moira. These letters, published here for the first time, show that Hastings remained an astute observer of British Indian politics. They provide a rich account of the ways in which Britain’s Indian empire evolved in the decades around 1800. Moreover, they reveal that one of that empire’s founders expressed a profoundly critical view of its progress. (shrink)

Wordsworth's philosophical outlook is usually thought of as, in part, combining empiricists' claims about the passivity of sensation with Platonic claims about the reality of forms. Without denying these fundamental orientations, it is argued that Wordsworth's orientation can be seen too against the background of scholastic Aristotelianism. Like the Aristotelians who debated with Locke, Wordsworth accepts the passivity not just of sensation but of knowledge of objects external to the mind, and, in common with the Aristotelian rejection of Platonism, he (...) accepts that the essences of things are somehow intrinsic to or immanent in the things themselves. (shrink)

In 1971 with his book A Theory of Justice John Rawls brought forward an epoch-making work of Political Philosophy. Although it has been received in multiple ways and caused a renaissance of Political Theory, it lacks a location in the history of ideas as yet. Therefore, in this article the question is considered to which historical discourses Rawls refers as well as analyzed in what sense Rawls’ work constitutes a position of discourse itself. It is argued that Rawls’ work refers (...) to three discourses. Firstly, it refers to the mediate modern discourse of social contract theories established by Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant. Secondly, it refers to the immediate neoliberal discourse of postmodernity. And thirdly, the intermediary discourse of modernity and postmodernity represents the connection between the both first-mentioned discourses. What Rawls does with his Theory of Justice is to transfer the specifically modern justification of the state to his own postmodern time. Rawls’ modifications to the original justification become necessary because the process of postmodern individualization requires a more abstract structure of legitimation. (shrink)

Offers an interpretation of neoliberal ideology as a political theology of chance that both justifies and dissembles risk-laden market processes as obscure divination tools used both to determine fate and fortune and yet to deny that such determination is taking place by any accountable authority.

In this collection of original essays, leading scholars of East Asian studies seek to define the deeply religious dimensions of Confucian and Neo-Confucian thought and practice in order to demonstrate its intellectual connections with other traditions of thought--such as Taoism, Buddhism, and Shintoism--at specific junctures in history.

Certain philosophers have attacked the problem of defining omnipotence by arguing that the following provides at least the core of a successful definition:(Dl) x is omnipotent = df. (s)(it is possible for some agent to bring about s->-x has the ability to bring about s).In Dl, x ranges over agents and s over states of affairs.Despite the intuitive plausibility of Dl, it has been argued that certain conjunctive states of affairs provide counterexamples to Dl, for example:(si) A ball moves at (...) t and no omnipotent agent brings it about that a ball moves at t.First, we show that if states of affairs like si are genuine counterexamples to Dl, then certain strategies which have been employed in the literature to provide an analysis along the lines of Dl do not succeed. Second, we argue that despite appearances, states of affairs like si are not genuine counterexamples to Dl. (shrink)

In this article I review Jonathan Wolff and Avner de‐Shalit’s recent book Disadvantage (2007), highlighting its many contributions to egalitarian theory and practice. These contributions build to the authors’ central prescription: that policy‐makers work to create a society of equals by reducing the tendency for disadvantages to cluster around certain individuals or groups. From there, I discuss the idea of declustering disadvantage in an American context, and consider its implications for the politically salient ideal of equality of opportunity. The purpose (...) of this discussion is not to posit Wolff and de‐Shalit’s theory of disadvantage as a theory of justice as equal opportunity. Instead, I illustrate their approach by reference to an influential theory of justice, whose proponents include those taken to affirm the authors’ consensual starting point. (shrink)